Life of the Dragon
by Anrheithwyr
Summary: Rosalie isn't so sure about her cousin's job tending to the dragons in Romania, but when he invites her to visit him, Rosalie will truly experience the life of those who work at Dragon's Keep


"And it's totally safe working with dragons, right?" Rosalie asked her older cousin cautiously as they walked past one of the smaller dragon paddocks, where a silvery-blue dragon was turning in circles, eyeing the two humans as they sauntered by. "They aren't likely to attack me or anything, are they?"

"What, dragons?" Russell replied with a chuckle, reaching into his belt pack for a chunk of raw meat as big as Rosalie's fist, chucking the meat in the direction of the dragon, which let out a mild yapping noise and made its way over to where Russell had thrown the dragon's meal. "Nah, Rosie, they're all fine. Perfectly trained, peaceful little beasts, the whole lot. They wouldn't hurt you unless you pissed 'em off, but we all know you're too smart to upset a dragon, right?"

"Of course," Rosalie replied as her cousin threw another chunk of meat over the paddock wall. The whole place smelled of dragon dung and fish guts, most likely because Russell seemed to be feeding the silver-blue dragon large handfuls of trout that had been fished out of the local river, the same fish that Rosalie had been offered for supper last night. "It's just…they're so _big_ and alarming."

"Big?" Russell laughed again, making Rosalie blush. Her cousin, the dragon expert, had been talking up the local reserve in Romania for months, but all he had done so far since Rosalie arrived was make her feel like an idiot, always laughing as he corrected her mistakes. "Rosie, _this_ little lady right here is only a Swedish Short-Snout, and a baby at that. She's, maybe, four and a half metres right now, with a chance of getting up to almost seven metres? If you think that _Naddy _here is big, you should see our Ironbelly. She's getting on in age, and we're trying to find a proper mate before it gets to be too late, but the Ironbelly, whom we've named Korra, is over _eighteen_ metres long."

"Whoa," Rosalie breathed, looking back at the dragon named Naddy, feeling highly impressed as she tried to imagine a dragon that was eighteen metres long. It just seemed too ridiculously big, though, and thinking of something so massive made Rosalie's head spin. To these dragons, she was probably nothing more than a chew toy, a few bites of dinner that they would barely notice. "I just don't understand how you can feel comfortable around these guys. I'd feel terrified out of my mind all the time if I was surrounded by massive, fire-breathing winged lizards every moment of the day."

"Yeah, well, dragon keeping isn't for everyone you know, Rosie, and I really don't blame you. Most people who visit feel the same way as you, of course. Overwhelmed, scared shitless, and always wondering how true the rumours are about us dragonologists being half-mad dragons ourselves. Worst of all is the _smell_, though," Russell joked, waving a hand in front of his face as the dragon named Naddy sighed contently from inside her paddock, releasing an awful smelling odour.

"Oh, _fuck_," Rosalie coughed, covering her mouth as the terrible smell hit her nose. Watching the fish go down had been hard enough for the vegetarian eighteen year old, but smelling it come back up was even worse. "Oh, _fuck, fuck, fuck_, that's bloody awful, Russell, why didn't you tell me she'd do that?! I don't see how people don't _die _of that! I might puke!"

"Here's a bucket, then, in case you _do_," Russell said, handing her a small plastic bucket that had been resting calmly beside the paddock. "We've got tons of 'em for exactly that reason. You wouldn't be the first to lose your lunch just because some dragon's digested theirs. I think I spent the first month puking every time I got even close to them, to be honest."

Rosalie took the bucket with a moan of thanks, holding it in front of her stomach as Russell led her away from the dragon paddock and closer to the little village where the dragon keepers stayed. The village, all-wizard, was not far from the equally tiny Muggle town of Băile Tușnad, resting near the lake of Sfânta Ana.

Though Băile Tușnad had just under two thousand residents, Dragoni Oraș, as the home of the dragonologists was called, was barely able to boast eight hundred residents, much of that population coming from those families who had been brave enough to follow those who worked here. Rosalie had been honestly surprised to find children running through Dragoni Oraș, little kids as young as new-borns, including Russell's own daughter, a babe of only four months named Ruxandra.

Russell seemed content here in Romania, with his Romanian dragon keeper for a wife, a pretty woman named Ionela, who smiled at Rosalie when she had arrived at the border of Dragoni Oraș, coming to collect her cousin-in-law with her infant child in tow, looking like something out of a faery-tale. Russell spoke highly of his little village, where there were shops aplenty for just about anything a person might need, and where everyone knew your name.

There were roughly one hundred and seventy families living in Dragoni Oraș, many of them the descendants of previous dragon keepers, some who had followed their fathers and mothers into the dangerous work, though plenty enough had settled for quieter jobs that did not involve constantly entering dragon paddocks and risking their lives to study the mysterious and ancient creatures; plenty more enough were wizards and witches from all over the world who, like Russell, came to study and train, learning all about these strange winged lizards.

Rosalie Mathis was _not _any of those sorts of people. The dragons terrified her, and she couldn't imagine wrapping an entire lifestyle around them, but Russell insisted there was something magical about looking a dragon in the eye and knowing that it could kill you at any second, but did not. He had been begging Rosalie to visit ever since he first arrived in Romania nearly four years ago.

"Are you enjoying your time here, then? I know it can be a bit much at first, what with all the dragons and the lack of Muggles, but I promise you, in Dragoni, we try to keep things as normal as possible, outside of the fact that there are giant lizards only half a kilometre away from the main part of town. But, you know, as long as you ignore that part, we're pretty normal," Russell said with a lopsided grin, mussing Rosalie's hair as he patted her head. "After a while, living with dragons becomes just a matter of life, and you almost forget that they want to eat us all."

"I'm sure," Rosalie replied as she watched Russell pull something else from the bag looped onto his belt. The item was a little vial about the size of Rosalie's pinkie finger and seemed to contain only a faintly coloured gas that swirled around, reflecting off of the sunlight, sometimes causing it to look like a small ball of fire blowing around inside of the glass bottle. Rosalie looked at it in fascination, leaning closer to her cousin to inspect the vial. "What's that, then?"

"Dragon's breath," Russell replied as they began climbing the hill that signified the last of the dragon paddocks. They were now only about twenty minutes from the town, and already signs of life were popping up on either side of the road. "We sometimes use it to control the beasts when they get too rowdy. Dragon's breath is known to be able to paralyse living things for short periods of time, often just enough for us to be able to calm down a rampaging dragon however we need to. Of course, it works on people, too, and often for longer times. Too much can permanently paralyse someone, though, I'll warn you of that, so we're usually pretty careful about how much we carry with us."

Rosalie watched as a group of young kids tossed around a Quaffle, chattering in a language that was not quite Romanian, but was not really English, either. There were tall children and short ones, heavy-set and painfully thin; dark-skinned, light-skinned, and every tone in between, and they all seemed to be happy, some even wearing shirts promoting the Dragon's Keep, where, no doubt, their parents and grandparents and siblings worked, and where they would one day find themselves assisting.

Before arriving at the Dragon's Keep, she had not seen so many different sorts of people or cultures all mixing at once without any sort of conflict. It was like the dragons brought them all together, a shared sort of heritage, a link that connected this tiny village of wizards, and though Rosalie Mathis had never before considered herself to be much of a dragon person, she could suddenly see herself staying here, in Romania, sleeping on her cousin's couch and feeding the Swedish Short-Snouts a bucket of roasted fish. She could imagine a life here, a future here.

"I think…" Rosalie scuffed at the ground, hands in her pockets as she imagined years ahead of her spent under the tutelage of the dragonologists, until she, too, could name off every sort of the flying beasts, and grew to love them like they were her own children. "I think I could grow to appreciate this sort of life…if I were to be given the chance to stay…you know, at least for a little while."

"Really?" Russell asked, grinning at her with an incredulous look. After all, Rosalie had always been so adamant about the dangers of dragons, but now, she was seriously considering moving here and learning more about the massive winged lizards. "Well, then, I guess this is _welcome aboard_, my dragon apprentice, Miss Rosalie Mathis."

Rosalie liked the sound of that, dragon apprentice. Maybe one day, it would be dragonologist, but for now, she was fine running around her cousin and learning all that he had to teach her. Baby steps, as her grandmother liked to say. _You conquer more ground by being careful_, and Rosalie knew that, soon enough, she would grow to love the dragons just as much as Russell and the other dragonologists did, until her whole life was dragons.

And Rosalie could barely even wait to start that new life.


End file.
